Discovering new music for free

From the gym to the office, whether at work or at home, the right song can greatly improve your mood or productivity. We all have favourite artists and albums, but many people might feel intimidated by the prospect of finding new music on their own. With this guide, you'll be able to check out the latest music for free.

Think about the last band you "discovered." Did you see them perform live at a pub? Perhaps a friend turned you on to them, or maybe it was a song you heard on the radio. Learning about a new artist or band can be very exciting and fun to share with others, but how do people get the inside scoop on up and coming musicians?

Using only a few websites and a little detective work, you can spend hours listening to all kinds of new music spanning multiple genres, and it won't cost a cent.

To get started, it's important to know about online radio stations like Pandora and Grooveshark. While the latter allows you to freely construct playlists from thousands of available songs and listen to the ones you want, when you want, Pandora offers a more friendly experience for people looking to try something new.

Pandora relies on the Music Genome Project, which will recommend songs and artists based on similarities to others that you already know and love. While it may not always hit the mark, it learns based on whether or not you like songs, so that with enough feedback, you'll be hearing new music that has a good chance of being pleasant to your tastes.

For those of you looking to try a more brute force method, several government-backed radio stations or foreign popular music charts are available to stream online. English-speakers might start out with the extremely user-friendly CBC Radio from Canada (http://cbc.ca/radio) or Australia's Triple J charts (http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/). Other similar stations exist for all manners of countries and musical genres.

It has never been easier to find new music, and after a few hours browsing these sites, soon you'll be the member of your social circle offering recommendations for the hottest up and coming musicians.